The Princess and the Dragon
by Dragon-Sigma
Summary: She was hunting firelilies when she found the dragon.


**So the recent Q&A confirmed my theory that Druk was the golden egg in The Firebending Masters. My initial idea for how Zuko got him was that either he visited the Sun Warriors and was given the baby or the baby wanted to go with him, or that Ran and Shaw showed up at some point and gave him to Zuko. But this was too cute to pass up!**

**~o~**

She was hunting firelilies when she found the dragon, exploring out beyond the palace walls and her tutors' watchful eyes. This part of the gardens had been left to grow wild since before she was born, and had grown over with weeds and thorns— the perfect place for a little princess tired of boring teachers and courtly graces to go adventuring.

She knew there were treasures to be found out here. That morning, while she sat in her calligraphy lesson listening to the scribe, a stuffy old man who had taught the royal children for as long as anyone could remember, drone on and on about proper form and technique, one of the servant boys had come running in with an armful of wildflowers picked from the old gardens. He'd knocked the writing table in his haste to give them to her, upsetting the ink pot and ruining both her clothes and the poem she'd been copying. Despite the mess, she had not-so-secretly been glad of the interruption, as it meant the early end of the lesson. Her instructor, on the other hand, had wanted the boy beaten, but Father had talked him out of it.

After changing out of her ink-stained robes, she had suddenly found herself with a morning free of lessons, and ample time for an expedition. The flowers the boy brought had been beautiful, if a bit crushed, and so she hoped she could find a firelily to give Mother when she returned from her trip.

Not wanting to upset the Palace staff by returning in dirty and torn clothes, she had put on her oldest training outfit before sneaking past the groundskeepers and climbing the wall into the abandoned garden. She'd wandered for a while, crawling under bushes and peeking behind branches, but she hadn't found any flowers yet, only vines and rusting tools.

And then she found the dragon.

The bush was smoking, which was strange enough, and when she pulled aside the branches, she saw the little dragon struggling there in the mud, bits of leaf stuck under its red scales and its wings snagged on the thorns. When it saw her, the dragon spat a smoky gout of flame and redoubled its thrashing, only succeeding in becoming even more tangled in the thornbush.

"Shh, stay still," she told it, reaching out tentatively to touch the snared wings. "You're going to hurt yourself. I can free you if you stop moving."

The dragon growled and reached out its long neck to snap at the air right in front of her face. When she didn't flinch, it huffed a breath of steam, then stopped struggling and fell limp, allowing her to work at the tangled mess of thorns.

She pulled the last springy branch gently away from the trapped wing and the dragon tumbled out into her arms. She picked the debris from its scales and stroked them smooth, and by the time she was done, the dragon was asleep in her arms, its tail wrapped around her arm and its head resting on her shoulder, breathing contented streamers of smoke from its snout.

She stared in wonder at the creature. Her father and great-uncle had seen dragons once, she knew, but from their stories, she didn't think those had been like this one. This little dragon was barely the size of the sleepy cats that wandered the palace, begging fish scraps from the kitchens and lying content in sunbeams on the roof. There weren't many left in the world, making this baby even more important. She had been told that the world had been changing since before her birth, and maybe this was another sign of good things to come.

Careful not to disturb it, she carried the sleeping dragon back into the palace, taking a circuitous route through the royal residence to avoid the bustle of ministers and staff in the main palace. She thought briefly of keeping the dragon a secret and sending a letter off to Uncle Iroh in Ba Sing Se asking for advice, but then she thought of her lessons with the Fire Sages. Keeping an auspicious omen hidden could do no good.

She eventually found Father in the library, poring over some chronicle or another with Master Chien, the court historian. They both turned as she entered the room. And stared. After a few moments of shocked silence, Master Chien broke into a series of questions. How did she find the dragon? Were there others? Had she seen or spoken with a spirit?

The dragon in her arms had raised its head at the noise, and seeing Father, began to sniff curiously at him. Father waved Chien silent and stepped towards it. The dragon hissed and curled tighter around her, hooking tiny claws into her clothes and tangling its long tail in her hair. Father stepped back, and the dragon calmed again.

She was in the middle of recounting her adventure when two servants arrived at the door to announce the afternoon meal. They were rarely surprised by anything, even the sight of their Princess with an armful of sleeping dragon. Father dismissed Master Chien, who left for his own meal, and then requested two bowls of the day's chicken-duck soup and a dish of meat for the dragon to be brought to a sitting room in the royal residence.

The dragon hardly stirred as she carried it down the corridor, only waking again at the scent of the spiced meat when the food was brought. It wouldn't take food from Father, so she took on the job of feeding it bits and pieces from the plate, and would have let her soup get cold if Father hadn't reminded her to eat as well.

Eventually, the dragon had eaten as much as it could, and fell asleep again, draped across her lap, making a noise that could only be described as purring.

Her father watched it, shaking his head in wonder at the little creature. He'd have to talk to the Fire Sages, she realized. She hoped they would let her play with the dragon sometimes. Rare mystical animal or not, she thought it would get lonely if they tried to keep it safe in one place.

But whatever happened next, this was the greatest of good omens. A sign of prosperity for their dynasty, for their world, and for their family.

~o~

**More to come!**


End file.
